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| | | Sky Islands Summit Challenge, AZ | | | |
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Sky Islands Summit Challenge, AZ
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| Hiking | 20.43 Miles |
5,916 AEG |
| | Hiking | 20.43 Miles | 8 Hrs 32 Mns | | 2.51 mph |
| 5,916 ft AEG | 23 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | During a work meeting earlier in the week with an individual from Sierra Vista, the topic of hiking came up, and she encouraged me to look at the Huachucas for some great hiking opportunities. As I was looking through HAZ resources and Googling, I came across this event and realized it was scheduled to take place that weekend.
Of course, registration had long since closed, but on a lark, I decided to email the organizers and see if there was a chance to still register. To my surprise, I received a phone call later that day, and on Wednesday signed up for the event.
The challenge is capped at 250 entrants and offers three levels: One Summit (Carr Peak--9,230 11.2 miles), Double Summit (Carr Peak and Miller Peak--9,465 ft, 15 miles), or Elite Triple Summit (Carr, Miller, and Pat Scott Peak--8,517 ft, 18.1 mi.). We, of course, signed up for the Triple. 
Drove down to Sierra Vista after work on Friday and made it just in time for the bib pick up, which was at the golf course and included dinner and the opportunity to hit some balls on the driving range. It was a beautiful evening with the setting sun lighting up some clouds over the mountains to the west.
Bibs and swag bag secured, we headed to our motel for a few hours of shut eye.
Bus departure for the Triple was a 4:20 am, with a scheduled start at the Ramsey Canyon Nature Preserve at 5 a.m. Predawn light offered limited visibility of wild turkeys high up in the trees squawking rather loudly.
Over half of the entrants were signed up for the triple. While billed as a hike (rather than a trail run), there were several trail runners signed up and they took off up front. The first half mile or so is road width as you head through the preserve past a couple of historical cabins and some huge maple trees and other foliage which I'm sure make for a fantastic fall colors hike. The wide road at the start also helped with sorting folks out into hiking speeds. At that point, we arrived at the Hamburg trail proper, and the trail was reduced to a single track. So, passing was a little more difficult, but it never felt particularly crowded. That said, I took fewer photos than usual because I didn't want to pass and then have to re-pass folks.
Past a look out point, the trail descends back to and along the creekbed, which only had pools given the dry winter (but would be fun and more beautiful in wetter years).
At the turn off for the Pat Scott Canyon trail, the Triples hung a right, while the Single and Doubles continued on Hamburg. From there, any congestion was basically done for the day.
5 miles and over 3K in elevation gained, we arrived at peak #1--Pat Scott Peak (which is on a different high point than the erroneously noted location on the topo map). There is no official trail to the peak itself, so the final climb to the summit involved a relatively steep but short off-trail scramble, from which our two other peaks on the day came into view. After a short break and a stamp in our summit "passport" book, we descended back to the Crest trail and wound back around to reconnect with terminus of the Hamburg Trail where we rejoined the Single and Double hikers.
The next section along the Crest Trail offered our first open views of the valley floor to the west an south into Mexico. Somewhere along this section, my phone must have pinged from a Mexican cell tower prompting a text from Verizon welcoming me to Mexico. 
At the Carr Peak trail, we hung a left and contoured/climbed an open bowl area up to a switchback climb to the summit of peak #2--Carr Peak. This section offered the best views of Miller on the day. The Carr Summit provided panoramic views down to Sierra Vista and off to the northern edge of the Huachucas. It was also pretty windy on the summit, but the breeze was generally welcome and kept any heat in check.
Then we backtracked to Crest and continued a short distance to Bathtub Spring, where we hung a right for our final peak. The trail here starts out with a gradual contouring climb, which made the elevation manageable. It steepens at the final spur to the summit, but wasn't as bad as I was anticipating.
Peak #3--the Miller summit is the high point of the range and is a beautifully shaped peak with a solid green carpet of aspens on its north-east facing slope. Great views into Mexico and all around from the top. I didn't realize that Miller is in the top 10-15 peaks in Arizona in terms of elevation (depending on how many of the SF peaks you "count")--higher than Mt. Lemmon or Wrightson, and cracks the top 10 in terms of prominence. However ranked, it's a lovely peak.
At the Miller summit, our climbing was more or less done for the day, with total AEG approaching 6,000. And while we were glad to be going down, the downhill grind also exacts its own price. 
The lower part of Miller Canyon had lots of greenery, which I'm sure I'd enjoy more if not for the prior 17+ miles of work. But as is typical in most long hikes, the last 2 miles are always 5 miles long.  Add to that the increasing temperatures (upper 80s/lower 90s at the TH), and we were glad to hit the finish line around 1:40 pm, where a shuttle bus ferried us a mile or two down the dirt road to where the busses could pick us up.
We bussed back to the start where our bibs gained us "free" entry into the wine/spirits festival with free drinks included. We don't drink, but most others on our bus were excited for some celebratory beers.
We planned to stay Saturday night as well, so we headed back to our motel for a well-deserved shower an nap. Then we hit dinner at Texas Roadhouse and decided to take in the newly released Mission Impossible movie. I generally like the series and it was worth a watch, but not as good as I was hoping. The movie was interrupted at a critical moment (when global electricity is shut down and the screen goes dark) when the fire alarm in the theater went off. For a while, we thought it was part of the movie/release schtick, but turned out to just be your regular teenagers pulling the alarm. After the FD came and restored order, we went back in and finished the show.
Having been up since 3:30 that morning, we crashed hard after the movie and awoke for a leisurely drive back to the Valley Sunday morning.
I'm not usually drawn into paying for hiking events, but this was pretty fun and certainly allowed us to see more of the Huachucas in one trip than we would have been able to do otherwise. |
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